Good and bad sides of giving birth

People say that time flies and it really does. Just over 6 years ago we had our first little boy.. where has the time gone? Little Man and myself didn’t have the easier journey with getting him into the world but we got there and here we are now 6 years on, and almost finishing his 2nd year at school.

When I was pregnant with Little Man I had quite a few issues with excessive fluid being the one they kept their eye on the most and because of this I was induced at 39 weeks. After being induced my waters broke about 2 hours later and I was getting regular contractions. After 24 hours I wasn’t dilating past 5 cm and the decision was made to take me for a c-section. I was scared and worried sick but I had no other choice.

After a while Little man came into the world and it was one of the 2 best moments of my life (the other best moment being when our 2nd son was born) I was however worried because he wasn’t handed to me and after about 10 minutes Doug and Little Man has to leave the room. All the programmes I had watched everyone stayed together, so it was at this point I knew something wasn’t quite right. The next thing I saw a consultant rush in with no scrubs on as he didn’t have time. At this point I had no idea what was wrong but I was full awake and knew there was panic. It turned out that when doing the section they had cut through one of my major veins and couldn’t stop the bleeding. I am glad I didn’t know this at the time because I would have freaked out big time. Once everything was under control I was cared for amazingly. The hospital staff were absolutely fantastic and I am so glad I was in safe hands. Although things turned out alright in the end for me, things could have been a lot different.

Things don’t always pan out this way though, sometimes things can go VERY wrong to the point of almost or even losing your life.

When I was born it was a similar story with my mum where she had a c-section. She ended up loosing a lot of blood and had to have a blood transfusion. The consultant said she needed 3 bags of blood however whilst giving her the 3rd bag the blood would not go into her system. The consultant came back and turn up the speed of how fast the blood goes into the body to force it through faster. The reason the blood would not go in is because they had over estimated the amount of blood she had lost and her system was jammed full and couldn’t take any more blood. Later on that night she didn’t feel well and buzzed the nurse, the nurse popped her head in and she said would be 2 minutes. When the nurse can back my Mum had actually passed out but the nurse though she had gone to sleep so left her. A short while later the nurse heard my Mum making a funny noise and went to check her and realised what was happening. She was rushed into theatre and it very extremely touch and go. The extra blood that was forced into her system had seeped onto my Mum lungs and they said to her after there was the most tiny space left that could fill with air. The reality is they told her 5 more minutes and she wouldn’t be here with us today.

This was 30 years ago and back then people didn’t really make claims for medical negligence. This is a story that these days would be a very good case for a claim and a very valid case. people are becoming more aware these days of their rights and what is in fact right. My Mums case was something that should never have happened, it could have left my Dad bringing me up on my own and it could have left my children without a Grandma. Have you suffered any problems when giving birth and have managed to have made a medical negligence claim?

Having a baby is the most common reason for being admitted to hospital. In the UK each year there are almost 700,000 live births making 1.3 births every minute

Gosh that sounds terrifying! Giving birth can be horrific for so many women, I was very lucky that my births were all relatively straight forward, although one of my children was stillborn, but in terms of complications I was lucky.

I had two totally different births with my kids. Both were born naturally, but Stacey almost died because the staff at the hospital just didn’t seem to have any clue as to what was going on. 9 years later I gave birth to my second at a different hospital, and everything was brilliant. It became so apparent how badly we’d been treated the first time round!!